1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a system and method for extending Application types in a centrally managed desktop computing environment. In particular, the present invention relates to a system and method for including application extensions to launch platform-dependent applications from a platform-neutral shell operating environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today's modern computer software systems are often enterprise systems organized in a distributed fashion throughout the organization. The various people in the organization perform different roles using the computer system depending upon the user's job description. In a banking example, one user may be a teller and therefore need teller applications in order to serve banking customers. Another user may be a loan officer, and need to access loan officer applications to serve customers that are applying for loans. A third user may be the branch manager, and need to access computer functions used to manage the bank branch.
Traditional computer systems are typically designed to either provide all necessary functions through each computer, for example by using a computer network to access the needed functions, or the system is designed so that individual workstations perform particular roles and are therefore used by a particular user or set of users. This presents challenges in organizations where multiple users use the same client computer system. In the banking example, there may be several tellers that use the same client computer system, depending on the shift, day of the week, or which teller happens to be assigned to a particular workstation.
If all organizational functions are provided from the same workstation, users that are not authorized to perform a particular function may accidentally or deliberately perform functions for which they are not authorized. For example, a teller may accidentally perform a loan officer or branch manager function if the function is available from the teller's workstation. One way traditional systems handle authorizations is by installing software components to handle each job role at each workstation, but limiting access based upon the user login. A challenge of this approach, however, is that each workstation needs to receive any new or modified software components in order to be available for any user that may need such functionality from any given workstation.
Some of the functions performed by users may be client-server functions, while other functions may involve using software systems that have been installed on the user's workstation. Software systems installed on the user's workstation may include legacy software applications and other software that has been written for a particular operating system environment.
A challenge in using a platform-neutral shell environment to launch applications (such as from a Java™ application) is that the shell environment does not have information needed to launch software applications that have previously been installed on the user's workstation. In addition, the platform-neutral shell may operate in a variety of operating system environments, such as any system that has a Java virtual machine (JVM™). Thus, the challenge is exacerbated by needing to interface with software applications that have been installed on a variety of operating system platforms.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method that provides application extension information to a platform neutral shell environment. Furthermore, what is needed is a graphical user interface, such as an icon, that can be used from the platform-neutral shell environment to launch the platform dependent software application. Finally, what is needed is a system and method to centrally manage the creation and dissemination of application extensions throughout an organization.